Teotihuacan
It was built by hand more than a thousand years before the swooping arrival of the Nahuatl-speaking Mexica or Aztec people in central Mexico. But it was the Aztec, descending on the abandoned site, no doubt falling awestruck by what they saw, who gave its current name: Teotihuacan.
A famed archaeological site located fewer than 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Mexico City, Teotihuacan reached its zenith between 100 B.C. and A.D. 650. It covered 8 square miles (21 square kilometers) and supported a population of a hundred thousand, according to George Cowgill, an archaeologist at Arizona State University and a National Geographic Society grantee.
"It was the largest city anywhere in the Western Hemisphere before the 1400s," Cowgill says. "It had thousands of residential compounds and scores of pyramid-temples ... comparable to the largest pyramids of Egypt."
Oddly, Teotihuacan, which contains a massive central road (the Street of the Dead) and buildings including the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon, has no military structures—though experts say the military and cultural wake of Teotihuacan was heavily felt throughout the region. Who built it?
Cowgill says the site's visible surface remains have all been mapped in detail. But only some portions have been excavated.
Scholars once pointed to the Toltec culture. Others note that the Toltec peaked far later than Teotihuacan's zenith, undermining that theory. Some scholars say the Totonac culture was responsible.
No matter its principal builders, evidence suggests that Teotihuacan may have hosted people from a patchwork of cultures including the Maya, Mixtec, and Zapotec. One theory says an erupting volcano forced a wave of immigrants into the Teotihuacan valley and that those refugees either built or bolstered the city.
The main excavations, performed by Professors Saburo Sugiyama of Aichi Prefectural University in Japan and Rubén Cabrera, a Mexican archaeologist, have been at the Pyramid of the Moon. It was there, beneath layers of dirt and stone, that researchers realized the awe-inspiring craftsmanship of Teotihuacan's architects was matched by a cultural penchant for brutality and human and animal sacrifice.
Inside the temple, researchers found buried animals and bodies, with heads that had been lobbed off, all thought to be offerings to gods or sanctification for successive layers of the pyramid as it was built.
Since 2003, archaeologist Sergio Gomez has been working to access new parts of the complex, and has only recently reached the end of a tunnel that could hold a king's tomb.
It's unclear why Teotihuacan collapsed; one theory is that poorer classes carried out an internal uprising against the elite.
For Cowgill, who says more studies are needed to understand the lives of the poorer classes that inhabited Teotihuacan, the mystery lies not as much in who built the city or in why it fell.
"Rather than asking why Teotihuacan collapsed, it is more interesting to ask why it lasted so long," he says. "What were the social, political, and religious practices that provided such stability?" Editor's note: This story was updated on April 17, 2025, to clarify that while the urban complex may have had connections with Maya cities, Teotihuacan was not ruled by the Maya. Archaeologists study a colossal Olmec stone head in La Venta, Mexico in this 1947 National Geographic photo. The Olmec civilization, the first in Mesoamerica, offers valuable clues into the development of the rest of the region. Photograph by Richard Hewitt Stewart, National Geographic
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Geographic
3 days ago
- National Geographic
See 100 years of New York City—through the lens of Nat Geo photographers
As New York City celebrates the 400th anniversary of its founding, National Geographic looks back on more than a century of covering the spirited metropolis. NOVEMBER 1957 A replica of the Mayflower sails into New York Harbor in July 1957 amid fanfare, escorted by planes, boats, and even a blimp. The vessel had crossed the Atlantic, following the route of the original ship to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where 17th-century English Puritan separatists started a colony. B. ANTHONY STEWART, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION In the summer of 1957, a replica of the Mayflower sailed into New York Harbor. Dubbed the Mayflower II, it had just finished retracing the Pilgrims' 1620 journey across the Atlantic to establish a colony in America. New York City celebrated its arrival with a ticker-tape parade. That November, National Geographic published an article written by the ship's captain about the Mayflower II's voyage, full of photos of its ocean journey and a victorious arrival in New York City (which was not a stop on the original ship's route to Plymouth, Massachusetts). As the city this year celebrates the 400th anniversary of its founding as the Dutch outpost New Amsterdam, National Geographic looked back on its coverage of the city over the last century. An early article highlighted its draws. 'It has more Irish and their sons and daughters than Dublin, more Italians and their children than Rome,' the author wrote. 'But New York's appeal is as much to the people of the United States as to those of the outer world ... New York is indeed the Niagara of American life ... so through this city passes the vast river of humanity that seeks the sea of opportunity in the world beyond.' (How to explore New York City's immigrant past through its food.) JULY 1918 Throngs fill the streets at an area then known as Newspaper Row, near a station that deposited commuters in Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge. EDWIN LEVICK, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION National Geographic often has showed readers parts of the world they might never visit—and in the magazine's early days that included not just distant lands but the vibrant metropolis of New York City. 'Most people didn't get the opportunity to travel a lot or to travel really far,' says Cathy Hunter, senior archivist at the National Geographic Society. In a sense, Hunter says, the magazine did 'the legwork for you and showing you the most famous sites.' Many of the magazine's first stories about the city focused on architecture, people, and culture—elements that lent the armchair travel experience. AUGUST 1998 Symbolizing prosperity and driving away evil, lion figures dance in the Lunar New Year parade. A 1998 article chronicled the growth of New York's Chinese community, which was 3 percent of the city's population at the time. CHIEN-CHI CHANG, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION SEPTEMBER 1990 Underneath Broadway Street, off-duty Santas wait at the subway station. JODI COBB, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION 'Go up on any high hotel roof after sunset and watch the city come to life,' wrote the author of the 1930 article 'This Giant That Is New York.' 'By electric moons, rainbows, and fixed comets you see Manhattan blaze from dusk into gorgeous theatrical illumination.' The editorial focus shifted over time as the magazine began to cover more relevant angles: environmental issues like water pollution and landfills, and later, how the September 11 terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the city. Yet one of the constants in National Geographic coverage, which spans over a century, is change. In a 2015 article called 'New New York,' writer Pete Hamill reflected on the 80 years he'd lived in the city and the transformation of its skyline. 'We New Yorkers know that we live in a dynamic city,' he wrote, 'always changing, evolving, building.' AUGUST 2020 From a helicopter, photographer Stephen Wilkes peered at his hometown in the early days of the pandemic, including Central Park with its new field hospital (lower left). 'New York is like a river, always running with energy and motion,' he said. 'When you see New York empty, it doesn't make any sense.' STEPHEN WILKES, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION National Geographic published its first major article about New York City in the July 1918 issue. Called 'New York—The Metropolis of Mankind,' it gave readers a broad overview of the city just as it was rising to global prominence in the final months of World War I. 'A city which the Great War has made the Earth's international trading center and civilization's crowning metropolis,' the article proclaimed, 'Gotham now commands a new interest, arouses a new pride in its achievements, excites a new feeling of wonder, and stirs in every American breast a realization that it is a city of all the people, national in all its aspects.' (Explore New York City through the 700 languages spoken on its streets.) 'The Metropolis of Mankind' came out at a time when National Geographic was becoming synonymous for publishing photos that held appeal for those armchair travelers, Hunter says. Readers could gaze in awe at the size of a crowd in front of the New York Stock Exchange, wonder at the length of a traffic jam of cars (and at least one horse) on 42nd Street, and take in a full view of the Woolworth Building—which, at nearly 242 meters, was then the tallest building in the world. A view of the intersection at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street—a traffic jam of cars, pedestrians, and horses all attempting to share the road. This issue came out at a time when National Geographic was becoming synonymous for photos that appealed to armchair travelers, KADEL & HERBERT, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION New York City streets looked quite a bit different a hundred years later in this aerial view of the Hudson River Greenway. The most heavily used bike path in the country, it stretches from Battery Park in the south to Dyckman Street in the north. George Steinmetz, National Geographic Image Collection And the buildings kept getting taller. The 1930 feature 'This Giant That Is New York' showed readers the new tallest building in the world, the 319-meter Chrysler Building, which had opened earlier that year. It also offered a glimpse of the ongoing construction of the Empire State Building, which promised to be even bigger. 'Tourist Manhattan' As National Geographic's popularity grew, it continued to serve as inspiration but also began to support real-life travelers in navigating the Big Apple. When New York City hosted its first World's Fair, in April 1939, that month's issue of the magazine came with a supplemental map called 'The Reaches of New York City.' The next time the World's Fair rolled around, in 1964, National Geographic sent subscribers a two-part map of 'Greater New York' and 'Tourist Manhattan.' (What was Manhattan like in the Roaring Twenties? See for yourself.) The magazine began to explore areas of New York City around this time. In 1959, the magazine ran a piece on the Staten Island Ferry, dubbing it New York's Seagoing Bus and highlighting its essential role for commuters from that borough. In 1977, it published a story about Harlem by Frank Hercules, a Trinidad-born writer who moved to the neighborhood in the 1940s. 'To live in Harlem,' he wrote, 'is sometimes to hear the siren song of success, often to be denied by heaven and disdained by hell, yet always to hope anew each morning, whatever yesterday's despair.' DECEMBER 1960 The casts of A Raisin in the Sun and My Fair Lady face off during a Broadway Show League softball game in Central Park during a 12-game season. BATES LITTLEHALES, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION MAY 1993 A lunch-hour napper rests in Central Park in the opening photo from an article about the sprawling 341-hectare oasis in the city. JOSÉ AZEL, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION In both 1960 and 1993, the magazine featured stories on Central Park that countered the iconic park's reputation at the time as a crime haven—a myth that often turned tourists away from visiting the park. The '93 story blamed the media for its role in perpetuating this myth and instead described the park as an 'oasis in the city.' Modern coverage Starting around the 1970s, another trend emerged: amid an awakening environmental movement, the magazine began to cover more of the issues for which it's known today. Hunter says this reflected a changing editorial outlook. 'In the early days…the magazine did not do stories that were not pretty,' she says. SEPTEMBER 2002 New York City resident Lisa Adams holds photos she took from her terrace on September 11, 2001, near the former World Trade Center buildings. IRA BLOCK, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION In 1978 the article 'Hudson: 'That River's Alive'' focused on the high pollution levels from the 1960s that had led to state and federal efforts to clean the Hudson River and other U.S. waterways. By 1978, the Hudson River had rebounded and saw a proliferation of aquatic life, prompting fishermen interviewed for the article to comment, 'That river's alive.' A 1991 story about landfills addressed the growing problems posed by sites such as Staten Island's Fresh Kills. (Decades later, the city is redeveloping it into Freshkills Park, which promises to be three times the size of Central Park.) Other articles focused on a city whose residents were in crisis. A year after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, National Geographic ran a piece featuring first-person stories from two people who lived in zip code 10013, right next to the World Trade Center. Two decades later, in August 2020, the magazine published photos of a markedly less bustling New York City amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as both residents and tourists stayed home. In more than a century of coverage, National Geographic depicted a New York City that is not only a thrilling place to visit but a real place with real people who call it home. In Pete Hamill's 2015 reflection on his decades as a New Yorker, he described his first time visiting the interior of One World Trade Center—built on the former site of the Twin Towers, whose destruction he had witnessed in person. 'I moved closer to the windows and looked down,' he wrote. 'There it was, the Woolworth Building. My favorite. Still here. Changing color in the fading sun.' JULY 1918 A view of the Woolworth Building in New York City. At the time, it was the tallest building in the world, standing at nearly 242 meters—but would within decades be eclipsed by the rise of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building. PAUL THOMPSON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION
National Geographic
11-07-2025
- National Geographic
Teotihuacan
It was massive, one of the first great cities of the Western Hemisphere. And its origins are a mystery. It was built by hand more than a thousand years before the swooping arrival of the Nahuatl-speaking Mexica or Aztec people in central Mexico. But it was the Aztec, descending on the abandoned site, no doubt falling awestruck by what they saw, who gave its current name: Teotihuacan. A famed archaeological site located fewer than 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Mexico City, Teotihuacan reached its zenith between 100 B.C. and A.D. 650. It covered 8 square miles (21 square kilometers) and supported a population of a hundred thousand, according to George Cowgill, an archaeologist at Arizona State University and a National Geographic Society grantee. "It was the largest city anywhere in the Western Hemisphere before the 1400s," Cowgill says. "It had thousands of residential compounds and scores of pyramid-temples ... comparable to the largest pyramids of Egypt." Oddly, Teotihuacan, which contains a massive central road (the Street of the Dead) and buildings including the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon, has no military structures—though experts say the military and cultural wake of Teotihuacan was heavily felt throughout the region. Who built it? Cowgill says the site's visible surface remains have all been mapped in detail. But only some portions have been excavated. Scholars once pointed to the Toltec culture. Others note that the Toltec peaked far later than Teotihuacan's zenith, undermining that theory. Some scholars say the Totonac culture was responsible. No matter its principal builders, evidence suggests that Teotihuacan may have hosted people from a patchwork of cultures including the Maya, Mixtec, and Zapotec. One theory says an erupting volcano forced a wave of immigrants into the Teotihuacan valley and that those refugees either built or bolstered the city. The main excavations, performed by Professors Saburo Sugiyama of Aichi Prefectural University in Japan and Rubén Cabrera, a Mexican archaeologist, have been at the Pyramid of the Moon. It was there, beneath layers of dirt and stone, that researchers realized the awe-inspiring craftsmanship of Teotihuacan's architects was matched by a cultural penchant for brutality and human and animal sacrifice. Inside the temple, researchers found buried animals and bodies, with heads that had been lobbed off, all thought to be offerings to gods or sanctification for successive layers of the pyramid as it was built. Since 2003, archaeologist Sergio Gomez has been working to access new parts of the complex, and has only recently reached the end of a tunnel that could hold a king's tomb. It's unclear why Teotihuacan collapsed; one theory is that poorer classes carried out an internal uprising against the elite. For Cowgill, who says more studies are needed to understand the lives of the poorer classes that inhabited Teotihuacan, the mystery lies not as much in who built the city or in why it fell. "Rather than asking why Teotihuacan collapsed, it is more interesting to ask why it lasted so long," he says. "What were the social, political, and religious practices that provided such stability?" Editor's note: This story was updated on April 17, 2025, to clarify that while the urban complex may have had connections with Maya cities, Teotihuacan was not ruled by the Maya. Archaeologists study a colossal Olmec stone head in La Venta, Mexico in this 1947 National Geographic photo. The Olmec civilization, the first in Mesoamerica, offers valuable clues into the development of the rest of the region. Photograph by Richard Hewitt Stewart, National Geographic
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Yahoo
Ted Cruz Caught on Vacation Abroad During Texas Tragedy—Again
It's a Beast of a time in Washington. Donald Trump's D.C. reality show is full of new characters, plot twists, and cliffhangers, and the Daily Beast will navigate you through it. The 47th president won't need to drain The Swamp. It's all leaking here… Never miss another secret from the D.C. ooze by signing up here to get The Swamp direct to your inbox.. The Swamp can exclusively reveal that Ted Cruz stayed in Greece and continued to sightsee as rescuers scoured the floodwaters in Central Texas that killed at least 100 people, including 27 campers and counselors from a summer camp. The Texas senator was spotted visiting the Parthenon in the Greek capital, Athens, with his wife, Heidi, on Saturday evening. That was a day after Camp Mystic announced that more than 20 girls had gone missing in the floodwaters. On Saturday, July 5, at about 6 p.m. local time (11 a.m. ET)—more than 24 hours after the Guadalupe River burst its banks—Cruz and his wife were spotted by a Swamp spy lining up outside the iconic tourist site. 'He was with his family and a lone security guard,' said an eyewitness at the Parthenon. 'As he walked past us, I simply said, '20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?' 'He sort of grunted and walked on. His wife shot me a dirty look. Then they continued on with their tour guide.' While Cruz admired the Doric columns of the fifth century B.C. ancient Greek temple, emergency workers were still searching for summer campers and families caught in the flash floods that cascaded through Texas Hill Country and inundated the Guadalupe River. It is not the first time that Cruz has faced criticism for holidaying while his constituents have faced a natural disaster. In 2021, Cruz took his family on a trip to Cancun, Mexico, after Texas was hit by a winter storm that left millions in his state freezing without power or water. At the time, the senator defended his sunshine flight by saying he wanted to be 'a good dad' but returned because 'it didn't feel right.' The death toll has now topped 100 from the Texas deluge, which began Friday, July 4, and is one of the deadliest floods in over a century. Cruz is understood to have landed in Athens on Thursday, the day after the Texas Division of Emergency Management announced that it was activating state emergency response resources. On the day Cruz touched down in Europe, NPR reported that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick held a press conference—as acting governor—warning of the 'potential flooding' that would hit overnight. The following day, on Friday, July 4, the lieutenant governor was forced to call a second press conference to address the scale of the disaster. 'My name is Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor, acting governor, the, uh, governor's out of state today,' he began. 'On a day which is usually for celebration. It's a very tough day in Texas. We had a disastrous flash flood.' In Athens, it was a calm and sunny day, peaking at 93F. Cruz didn't get a plane back to Texas until Sunday. He was at the scene of the flooding in Kerrville, Texas, on Monday morning. The senator told a press conference he was on the phone to state officials within hours of the flood. 'In the first few hours of this flood, I was on the phone with Governor Abbott, was on the phone with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, I was on the phone with Nim Kidd, the head of the Texas Department of Emergency Management, and then I called President Trump,' said Cruz on Monday morning. 'He was having dinner at the time, it was still early in what was transpiring, and I wanted him to know. I said, Mr. President, from everything we're hearing right now, this appears to be bad, really bad. 'There may be a very significant loss of life unfolding right now in Texas... The president said, 'Ted… whatever assets you need, whatever resources you need, yes, let us know, and we will provide everything.' 'Within hours, we had over a dozen helicopters in the air, National Guard, DPS, game wardens, Coast Guard, doing search and rescue.' However, it appears that Cruz still managed to enjoy some of the sights of Athens after this phone call. On Monday, Cruz also appeared live on Fox & Friends from Kerrville, Texas, in the area worst hit by the disaster and posted a number of messages on X. 'There aren't words to describe the grief that Texans are feeling. Pray for Texas and Kerr County.' He told reporters he picked up his own daughter, Catherine, from a camp just down the road from Camp Mystic. 'We picked up our youngest daughter [Catherine] last week from camp, five miles away,' he said. 'I will tell you I've been speaking to moms and dads, number one, of kids who are still missing and the agony of not knowing where your daughter is—there's nothing like that.' In January, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was widely criticized after she traveled to Ghana while wildfires raged through California, leaving 29 people dead and more than 180,000 buildings destroyed. Cruz's staff refused to offer comment on the record to The Swamp before publication but wanted to go off the record, to which The Swamp agreed, believing that Cruz's aides were speaking to us in good faith. Our initial report therefore reflected their claim that it had been impossible for Cruz to get a flight until Sunday. After we published, Cruz's communications director Macarena Martinez posted on X that she had spoken to the Daily Beast and said, 'A bulls--- piece published by a bulls--- rag outlet with no credibility, and with no regard for the tragedy in Texas. The Senator is on the ground in Texas and arrived as fast as humanly possible. I explained all of this to their two-faced reporter.' Notably Martinez denied none of the facts of The Swamp's revelations. The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment. The Swamp is written by David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice. This exclusive extract from this week's edition of The Swamp is just a taste of the delicious secrets we reveal every week. Sign up here to never miss an edition.
